 |
Features Actors: Jared Leto, Nicholas Cage, Ethan Hawke, Bridget Moynahan, Ian Holm & Eamonn Walker. Running Time: 122 Min. Rating: R "Lord of War" is about a man named Yuri (Nicolas Cage) who in the early 80's decides that he doesn't want to just work in a restaurant for the rest of his life and decides that instead he wants to be an arms dealer. Once he makes his first sale, Yuri is hooked on the feeling of making big money for selling firearms, and continues to sell the firearms but he wants more and more of a profit and more and more of a challenge. It's not until an Interpol agent (Ethan Hawke) is hot on Yuri's case that he begins to question the nature of his business and whether what he is doing for a living is moral and if he should be responsible for the hands these weapons get into and what they are used for. A powerful performance by Nicolas Cage, as well as a great thought-provoking movie ensues… I love movies like this one for a few reasons. The main reason is that for the most part you can't predict what is going to happen next or where the film is going. Another reason I like movies like this is because it's powerful and its makes you think. And lastly I like a movie like this because it doesn't end in a typical way and actually leaves you feeling blown-away and surprised. The filmed starred Nicolas Cage who lately has done of some the best work of his career. His performance here is top-notch and powerful. There are so many other people in the film including Jared Leto, Ian Holm, Ethan Hawke and Bridget Moynahan to name a few who are also very good at the roles they played. This film is written and directed by Andre Niccol the same man who wrote "The Terminal" and "The Truman Show". I guess this movie all comes down to how open minded the movie-goers who see this are. I guess it also amounts to where you stand on the political fence. The film is not for those who don't have an open mind about things that are going on in the world today. The movie is based on true events so be warned that some of things shown in the film are happening in real life or did happen at one point in time. To be honest, I do believe what the film states in the end, it doesn't seem at all far fetched. It's like Yuri says in the film "it's not our war and no matter what we do we can't stop it" and that's true it's like smoking kills people every day but there are people who run cigarette companies everyday knowing that they are killing people every single day and getting people addicted to something that in the end will kill them. Is that moral? What can we do to stop it? These are questions this film asks and leaves it to the viewer to decide on. Hope this helps you decide.Thanks for reading! :)Read full review
from a life of crime? Yuri and his brother Vitaly begin gun running. Yuri has dreams of becoming the biggest Gun runner. He soon fulfills that dream and has all that a man could want. He has a beautiful home, Beautiful wife, child, cars, you name it. The days of gun running are not so glamorous for his brother Vitaly who becomes addicted to drugs and has every kind of terrible woman hanging from him. A life of crime keeps Yuri running from Agent Jack Valentine(Ethan Hawke) who is always a step or two behind Yuri. This is a great action packed film that really makes you think a little about who really are the War Lords? Is it the guy selling the guns or the dictator using the guns?
"Lord of War," despite the fact that it fits in a jewel case, is not a movie: it is a message. Writer and director Andrew Niccol pounded that message home with a large hammer, but in so doing seems to have deliberately sacrificed most of the possible ways that a motion picture can draw the viewer into itself. Start with the narration--a lot of it--by Nicholas Cage, mostly speaking off camera in voice-overs while the action goes on, but sometimes reducing himself to a talking head, staring into the camera, punctuating his lines with a puff on whatever he is smoking at the moment. The quantity and quality of the narration overwhelms the rest of the movie, leaving a great ensemble cast with nothing to do but shuffle on, do the cardboard bits that Cage has just told us to expect, and shuffle off again. Ethan Hawke (Training Day), Bridget Moynahan, Donald Sutherland, and of course Cage himself are all fine performers with much more potential than they are allowed to use. Eamonn Walker, as Liberian dictator Andre Baptiste, Sr., is perhaps the most entertaining of the subordinate characters. He prefers things his way, and it is his habit of re-casting certain English words into eccentric phrases (e.g., blood-bath into "bath of blood") that gives the film its title, when Baptiste/Walker turns "warlord" into "lord of war." The only thing is that he repeats that gimmick four times--and it has to be explained to the audience, in case anyone missed it. In this manner, potential "nuances" like Walker's quaint speech pattern, Cage's grammatical tobacco inhaling, and also Cage's character's preference for one and only one sexual position, all become not nuances, but simply cliches. True, Jared Leto achieves an emotional break-through when he has an epiphany during the final stages of negotiating a particularly unsavory arms deal. Niccol does his best, however, to dampen the impact of this by having Cage direct everybody's attention to Leto's character before the key scene is acted out. Hey, watch the kid, everybody! The transition from nuance to cliche almost makes it to farce if anyone stays around for the closing credits. The viewer by that time has glimpsed--and I mean glimpsed--a shadowy Marine lieutenant colonel played (at) by the talented Donald Sutherland, who must play a mannikin with lots of campaign ribbons. In the credits, his character is identified as "Lieutenant Colonel Oliver SOUTHERN." Chick-a-boom! For viewers too young to remember, LTC Oliver NORTH, USMC, played a key role in the Iran-Contra arms deal scandal under the Reagan Administration. I get it, Andrew, I get it. The individuals in the cast of "Lord of War" don't have to take a back seat to the equally stellar crew that did "Traffic," but comparison of the conceptual design of those two movies speaks volumes about how, IMO, a global problem can and cannot be treated effectively in a dramatic presentation. Wikipedia says Amnesty International loved this movie. I'm sure they did. They are pursuing a noble cause and have a right to be pleased when that cause is publicized, but as a dramatic production, this left me totally cold. With the one exception noted--Jared Leto as Vasily Orlov--the characters are what they are from start to finish, with no development allowed inside the Niccol straight-jacket of Cage's narration. Only an NBA ref could endorse Ann Hornaday's Washington Post verdict that this is a "stylish, provocative thriller."Read full review
Nicholas Cage plays an illegal arms dealer with similarities to post-Soviet arms dealer Viktor Bout. The film was officially endorsed by the human rights group Amnesty International for highlighting the arms trafficking by the international arms industry. The story of a young Soviet immigrant as he begins his career as an armes dealer. He sells war surplus arms to all sides of conflicts all over the world, from the 1982 Lebanon war, to the massive supplies of Russian stockpiles of weapons in the Ukrain. He sells everything from AK47's to ex-Soviet aircraft. He sells to anyone from Arab terrorists to African dictators and warlords for three decades. This is a movie that everyone should watch, because this same scenario is playing out every dat around the world.
Nicholas Cage is perfect at Yuri Olav, a Ukrainian native who's family moved to America years before. They run a substandard Russian restaurant that serves borscht (beet soup) as a staple. Their father has become a devout Jew. And Yuri and his brother Vitaly (Jared Leto, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM) help with the restaurant. Then one day, after witnessing a failed assassination attempt, Yuri receives an epiphany: everyone needs guns. Thus the stage is set for him to become one of the premiere arms dealers in the world. Against the backdrop of Yuri's life, we get to see the effects of his chosen profession upon his brother's psyche. Vitaly gets into drugs and women, anything he can to help him forget that he and his brother are involved in a business that allows people to kill other people. And when Yuri gives up gun running for a while, Vitaly too comes back to a semblance of normalcy. But when Yuri returns to guns, and asks Vitaly to join him, the stress becomes overwhelming (this is something that I have yet to see any other reviewer comment on and, the way Jared Leto pulls off his excellent portrayal of Yuri's brother, it's a pretty powerful message.) I also think that many reviewers may not understand the mentality of a sociopath. Their moral compass is broken, according to our standards. So when Yuri (Cage) doesn't grow out of his morally ambiguous state, it didn't surprise me one little bit. Also, Nicholas Cage is a deadpan actor, and that's probably why they chose him. Remember RAISING ARIZONA and the diaper scene in the convenience store? Or LEAVING LAS VEGAS? Or BRINGING OUT THE DEAD? Cage was the only person I could think of who could pull off a convincing Yuri. I also need to comment on the brutal message that smacks the viewer. From the opening sequence in the film where we see Yuri standing in a war-torn street surrounded by a paved street covered in spent gun shells, to the scene where Vitaly witnesses the execution of children in Africa, there's not a single moment in the film where the biting reality of what Yuri does and how it effects those around him isn't displayed. One thing that really intrigued me, too, is that I saw the film's trailer on TV long before the movie came out, and they always showed the bit where Yuri is in the airport and is approached by agents from the ATF, and Yuri says "I guess this isn't about the alcohol or tobacco." I laughed at the trailer. But interestingly enough, once that scene came up on screen in context to the rest of the plot, there was very little comedy in it and the message much more powerful and poignant. This film definitely had it's comedic moments, but laughing at it is oft-times painful to think about because of what we see Yuri and his brother go through later.Read full review
Current slide {CURRENT_SLIDE} of {TOTAL_SLIDES}- Best Selling in DVDs & Blu-ray Discs
Current slide {CURRENT_SLIDE} of {TOTAL_SLIDES}- Save on DVDs & Blu-ray Discs
Current slide {CURRENT_SLIDE} of {TOTAL_SLIDES}- You may also like
